Chaucer and the City

Overview

Overview

Essays exploring Chaucer's identity as a London poet and the urban context for his writings.

Literature of the city and the city in literature are topics of major contemporary interest. This volume enhances our understanding of Chaucer's iconic role as a London poet, defining the modern sense of London as a city in history, steeped in its medieval past. Building on recent work by historians on medieval London, as well as modern urban theory, the essays address the centrality of the city in Chaucer's work, and of Chaucer to a literature and a language of the city. Contributors explore the spatial extent of the city, imaginatively and geographically; the diverse and sometimes violent relationships between communities, and the use of language to identify and speak for communities; the worlds of commerce, the aristocracy, law, and public order. A final section considers the longer history and memory of the medieval city beyond the devastations of the Great Fire and into the Victorian period.

Dr ARDIS BUTTERFIELD is Reader in English at University College London.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Chaucer and the Detritus of the City - Ardis ButterfieldGreater London - Marion TurnerThe Production of Space in Chaucer's London - Ruth EvansChaucer's Poetics of Dwelling in Troilus and Criseyde - Barbara NolanChaucer and the Language of London - Christopher CannonThe Canterbury Tales and London Club Culture - Derek PearsallLondon and Southwark Poetic Companies: `Si tost c'amis' and the Canterbury Tales - Helen CooperLiterary Contests and London Records in the Canterbury Tales> - C. David BensonThe Great Household in the City: The Shipman's Tale - Elliot KendallLondon and Money: Chaucer's Complaint to His Purse - John ScattergoodAfter the Fire: Chaucer and Urban Poetics, 1666-1743 - Paul DavisChaucer and the Nineteenth-Century City - Helen Phillips

Reviews

The dozen essays of this attractive collection offer scholarship of critical substance and originality that deserves to be considered and responded to by students of Chaucer and his times. JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMAN PHILOLOGY A significant contribution to the present and future state of Chaucerian scholarship. STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING Offers twelve richly informative essays. [...] Required reading for anyone interested in London history, Chaucer's social context, or medieval urban culture. SPECULUM